


Repeat After Me

by Anonymous



Series: Autistic Exchange 2015 [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Autistic Character, Dissociation, Gen, Meltdown, POV Dirk Strider, Panic Attacks, Sensory Overload, The Autistic Exchange, autistic dirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dirk Strider, and you have a very good plan. Unfortunately, it's also being thrown out the window by the fact that the sky is falling. But still, it was a great plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repeat After Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LunaOpheliac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaOpheliac/gifts).



> This fic includes casual references to necrophilia (as a label for macking on dead kids to revive them) that may upset some readers. Also, a stress induced meltdown with dissociative elements and a brief period of nonverbalness. Please be advised.

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you had a plan. It was an excellent plan. You are a consummate planner, after all. You've got no less than a dozen machinations in operation at any given time. There's little ones to mark each passing day. Big ones intended to span months and achieve long term goals. You even have a few dubious concepts for lifelong works. But all that pales in comparison to this one plan.

It had only been intended to cover a single moment, but that moment would color the progress of four different lives. A solid double what any of your previous endeavors could claim.

It was a good plan.

You tell yourself this on a loop- silently. It provides a mental beat for the constant slew of rhymes you're spitting. Your sylladex won't work itself.

Another bloom of violent red careens out of the sky. You don't have time to think about that, so you just move. It was a good plan, but it's not going to work now. You need to make a new one. An even better one.

The idea doesn't really come to you as a whole. You have a rough sketch of what to do next, and you do it. Running on faith isn't your favorite tactic, but you more or less trust yourself. You are a consummate planner, after all. You'll figure it out.

You figure it out.

The new plan is absolutely awful. You realize that somewhere around the tooth-shattering rattle of grinding a rocketboard at this kind of speed. But, it's better than the old plan, because it will work. Still, “it was a good plan” circulates, percolates, regurgitates. You're used to the sound of your own voice coming at you from a dozen directions at once, but the multitudes of you don't usually agree on anything.

You all agree that it was a good plan.

The constant white roar of wind past your face doesn't block out the repetition. Neither do the half dozen thin slices of pain from shattering Roxy's window. It's around the point where you think you might have just high fived the batterwitch herself that you decide all this thinking is dangerously distracting. You let the words fall out of sync, into a formless burr that you can almost mistake for the rush of air.

It sounds a lot like Roxy's blood looks, spilling in great gashes out of her punctured gut. You hadn't really wanted your first face to face meeting with her to involve this much necrophilia. Or any necrophilia.

It was such a good plan. Even your auto responder agrees. That makes it twice as stupid and four times as necessary for you to fix this fuck up.

You kiss Roxy, because that's an important part of the new plan. Then, you have to kill yourself, too. The new plan does not appreciate you nearly as much as the old plan did, but the moment of silence between putting your head in the transportalizer and pressing the button is almost reassuring. The rushing is gone, and you're about to cut off the source of all the pounding, swelling discomfort. If you know anything about having multiple bodies- and you do- it's that the new brain will be much quieter. For a few seconds, anyway.

Jane is also dead. You knew that, but it's still odd to see her body there, empty and silent. Roxy is much more animated, angsting over the corpse in a parody of panic. You push her aside- you push aside the fact that this is the first time you've touched another living, breathing person- and kiss Jane. You're two and two for macking on dead broads.

And then everything goes hazy. You're moving through spaces that were never intended for living people, and Roxy's arms are around your waist like a tether, tying you to the board beneath your feet. That is a stupid thought, and you are too busy for metaphors. There's a jolt, and you pick up a new passenger. The drag of Roxy's weight was difficult to compensate for. The drag of Jane's as well is triply disorienting. If you had any time at all, you would stop and put her feet where they belong, just so you don't have to constantly feel like you're about to fly off without even the benefit of plywood and combustion. But, as you keep reminding yourself, you do not have that kind of time.

The thought feels wrong. It's too far away. It doesn't matter.

You skim the surface of an ocean that is identical to the one you've called home your entire life, and which is obviously alien. Or perhaps you're the alien here. Now.

The bucket in your hand pulls all three of you dangerously to one side. You compensate.

You want to feel bad for Jake, in the moment before you cover him in cold salt water. He's about to have to join the sucking dead faces club, and it's not a great one to be in. But, you're too busy trying to decide if the thick fog between your head and your body is going to go away when the adrenaline cuts out from under you, or if it's a permanent side effect of looping through too many paradoxes, nonphysical spaces, and deaths in such a short time.

Unfortunately, the fog also keeps you from figuring that out.

You dump the water all over Jake, and he splutters awake.

Something explodes, and you're fairly certain it isn't your skull splitting open like an egg.

Reality twists around itself and becomes a homogeneous array of voxels. You think it would be nice to lay down beneath your bed for a few hours.

AR is pinging incessantly, though, and even his text and your shades aren't enough to hide the fact that everyone is staring at you.

A voice that you like to think of as your inner Jane whispers a general 'oh dear.' You're going to have to train that particular line of thought to speak differently. Jane- the real Jane- is talking, and she sounds nothing like the Jane in your head.

Roxy is applauding, giddy with your success. You don't flinch at each sharp slap of her palms, but you're too aware of it. Of how still you're holding yourself. It's not a natural stillness. You aren't sure you actually could move your body right now. Maybe the adrenaline is ebbing.

Jake has blood on his face. It's your blood, which you put there, all on your own. It doesn't belong there. But you can't get rid of it, because Jane is still talking. All her words slide into your fog, and don't become shapes and definitions and implication like they should. Like they do when she's text on a screen.

AR is still going, too, but the text in your shades changes color abruptly. No more bloody red, but instead the searing cyan that fundamentally _is_ Jane. After another moment of perfect, impossible stillness, you try to push past the sound of rushing wind. You shouldn't still be hearing it when you're standing still. You try to decipher the letters.

They scroll away faster than you can read them; Jane is speeding up. She looks upset. Is she angry? You try take one step away from her, but it turns out you really can't move your body after all.

Jake drops your head with a disgustingly wet, loud squelch. You can't feel the severed bones and nerves hitting the ground, but you flinch anyway. He's got his arms around you, and you realize it's because you've lost your footing. The points of contact ache. He's talking too.

They all are, now, and it's a wash of noise that you can't figure out. Your entire fetch modus is talking: quick, precise, perfect arrangements of word and meaning that bend reality around your lips. You've taught yourself form the ground up how it works. But all that knowledge evaporates.

Their voices hurt.

You wrench yourself out of Jake's grip, and some tiny part of you reminds you to be cool. This is your big entrance. Cool kids don't faint after saving everyone.

It doesn't matter how angry they are at you. You can fix that later. The most important thing, now, is to set up the foundation for those repairs. Or. Or a scaffold. For a new. For something. The metaphor isn't coming.

The most indescribably awful sounds start coming from all directions. A high pitched whine from your left, staticky groaning to your right, and a rattling mess of even more voices from dead ahead. You recognize that one, at least. You're not sure what low fidelity renditions of My Little Pony have to do with all this.

Jane and Jake keep talking. Maybe they aren't angry after all? But you can't be sure. Jane looks like you imagine angry looks. She's looming and her eyes are narrow and pinned to your face. Jake looks like every upset man in every movie ever filmed, and all of them are angry. Every last one.

But Roxy's staring at her phone, and her voice has dropped out of the cacophony.

She grabs Jane and Jake's arms. Hauls them both back with the kind of strength that comes from manhandling rifles with a kickback that could take out a city block. You would be impressed to see it first hand, but you're busy. She's shoving her phone in front of Jane's spluttering face- oh, maybe that's angry for Jane. She had to let go of Jake to do it, but he's not trying to get to you anymore, either.

You were supposed to be thinking of something cool to say. Big entrance. It was part of the plan.

You're not really sure what you're thinking now- if you're thinking at all. You know you're confused, you're probably frightened, you're definitely in pain. You also know these things aren't what you want to associate with your friends, with seeing them- touching them- for the first time.

You decide to ignore those things. The fog generously descends further, blocking it all out.

Jane goes quiet, too, finally. The silence of wherever you are is entirely unnatural. No oceans. No insects. You can hear everyone else breathing. That's all you can hear. There isn't anything else in this entire world.

This time, when AR's text comes up on your shades, you can put together what it says.

TT: The stage is all yours, bro.  
TT: And by yours, I mean ours. And by ours I mean mine.  
TT: Repeat after me.

For the first time in years, he does his job the way he's supposed to. Taking in other people's words, and creating the responses you would say when you're otherwise occupied. The fact that you're reading the script out yourself is irrelevant.

Eventually, you can think for yourself again. Eventually you will learn to understand the way Jane's face moves, or the ridiculous shape of Jake's vowels, or the meaning of Roxy's obsession with moving her hands when she talks- primarily onto other people's bodies. Some time around then, you will find out that the way your voice stayed in a flat drone made you look nonchalant. Unaffected by whatever fit of vertigo had made you nearly trip, or anything that had come before it.

Made you look cool, even.

But that's quite a way off yet.

For now, you just rattle off the words, and let the fog do the rest.

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt for this fic was: Dirk is used to being alone. And while he obviously craves human contact, there's the fact that humans are unpredictable, and being around them is, while very nice, also risking sensory hell. A fic about his experience when first meeting his friends in person would be really cool.
> 
> As tends to be the case, I went off the track again, although I am hoping it meets the spirit, if not the letter, of the request.


End file.
